NASCAR SPRINT CUP SERIES
GOOD SAM RV INSURANCE 500
POCONO RACEWAY
TEAM CHEVY DRIVER QUOTES DURING RAIN DELAY
AUGUST 7, 2011
CHAD KNAUS, CREW CHIEF, NO. 48 LOWE’S CHEVROLET, CURRENTLY SCORED IN 2ND PLACE: “This is a tough race track and it is difficult to get all three corners to where they handle properly. Jimmie (Johnson) is compromising very very well and doing a great job. The guys are doing a great job on pit road. I couldn’t be prouder of the pit stops we’ve had today. It’s good stuff. It’s fun. Wish Mr. Hendrick was here with us. Unfortunately, he’s back in Charlotte (NC) with his Mom, she is not feeling very well right now. We want to give Miss Mary our best wishes. Hopefully they are watching and are proud of what we are doing”
JIMMIE JOHNSON, NO. 48 LOWE’S CHEVEROLET, CURRENTLY SCORED IN 2ND PLACE: “It’s been good. We made some changes coming into today’s race. Just being patient, trying to take care of our stuff. It was time to go there at the end and we got by the No. 11 (Denny Hamlin). Very very proud of my guys, man. We’ve been working really hard. It feels good to be up there racing for the lead. Certainly hope we can go back racing and race for the win.”
HOW MUCH DID THE TRACK CHANGE AS THE RACE WENT ON? “I think the track has been in change the whole weekend since we’ve been here. Now here, from about the midway point of the race on, it’s been familiar to me and drives like how I would expect it to. I think we have been kind of chasing the track all weekend long and now it finally showed up. Unfortunately, the rain is now going to wash it off and we are going to have to start over. Either way we have good track position and a fast car.”
DID YOU FEEL LIKE YOU HAD ANY MOMENT WHERE YOU HAD AN OPPORTUNITY TO PASS JOEY (LOGANO, RACE LEADER)? “The lap before the caution came out, I got pretty close to him through turn three and I wanted to set him up there again. As we came through the short shoot into three, there was a lot of water on the windshield and I kind of backed off and just took my time getting through. It didn’t make any sense to tear something up at that point. I feel like we have a good car. Catching someone here is one thing, passing them is a totally different deal. I hope we can get back to racing and go out there and race for this win. I just want to say a quick hello to my wife and my daughter, Channi and Genevieve at home. I guess we are past halfway so I’ll be able to see them tonight.”
CLINT BOWYER, NO. 33 CHEERIOS/HAMBURGER HELPER CHEVROLET, CURRENTLY SCORED 7TH: “The car has been swinging. Too tight, too loose, even when we are a little loose. The struggling to get the front end to turn a little bit. It tough to figure it out. But, if we can get my front-end, pull the rear-end out by raising the track bar or pulling wedge out of it, I think we’re going to be all right. Trying to find that right recipe. That key ingredient right there to get our car closer to the front. But it’s been good so far.”
DO YOU WANT TO GO BACK OUT AND RACE? “We are seventh obviously that is a decent run. But the problem is that everybody I’m racing for the Chase is in front of me so I better get my butt back out there. We have to get the most we can out of every weekend. It was six including this race. Five races after this isn’t a whole lot of time especially when you are only running them down a few points at a time. We’ve got to be able to capitalize on somebody making a little bit of mistake, a little bit of a slip up like we did two weeks ago. If they we do, we have to be there for the taking like they were with us.”
HOW ARE YOU FEELING? “I was all amped up and excited when we got out and now it is starting to bog down again. Really I hope we get back going. I need to get back going. Everybody I am trying to beat out of this Chase deal is in front of me. So this is my only opportunity. We are in seventh place right now, but to be able to beat those guys, I need another shot at it. Only time will tell.”
TONY STEWART, NO. 14 OFFICE DEPOT/MOBIL 1 CHEVROLET, CURRENTLY SCORED 28TH: “Not much better than we have been. We keep plugging away though. We’re back on the lead lap now so we’ll keep trying. We drug the splitter pretty hard there. I don’t think that it hurt anything but it didn’t help getting a flat tire and losing the track position and getting a lap down. We have the Lucky Dog now when we go back. The good thing is, I talked to Darian (Grubb, crew chief) and getting the Lucky Dog have the luxury of getting a longer pit stop and take some time. We are going to make a packer adjustment in the front and see if we can’t make this Office Depot/Mobil 1 Chevy a little bit better. Definitely not happy with 28th right now. Have had plenty of time to watch and see what this is doing to us in the points right now. I’m all about the sunshine right now.”
KEVIN HARVICK, NO. 29 BUDWEISER CHEVROLET, CURRENTLY SCORED 12TH: TALK ABOUT YOUR RACE CAR TODAY: “We’ve just been extremely loose since we started the race. Then traffic, the car won’t turn the front, but just snaps the back as it comes up off the corner. We’ve really struggled with getting it right. We’ve had a couple of pit stops where we lost some track position so we just have to figure out what we want to do to the car here to try to make it better to get it up off the corner and hopefully get that track position back that we lost. It is just one of those things. We don’t really know what we need to do, we think we know what we want to change, but we can’t change it right now so we just have to do the best that we can with our Budweiser Chevrolet hoping that we can put our self in the right position after its rained here. Hopefully the track changes in our direction.”
YOU GUYS ARE IN GREAT POSITION FOR THE CHASE, ARE YOU GAMBLING? “I think we have been gambling. We’ve been on that side of the fence for awhile now and just kind of tried to do some things that we probably shouldn’t have done and it worked out for us in Charlotte. We’ve had some things not go our way for a few weeks. Today we just haven’t run well and last week we didn’t run well. All-in-all, we’ve been working on some new stuff and hopefully we can get it on the race track the next few weeks.”
WHAT DO YOU THINK IT WOULD BE LIKE TO BE WHERE SOME OF THE GUYS ARE IN 11TH TO 20TH? “We’ve been fortunate the last couple of years to be on this side of the fence. We’ve been on that side of the fence fighting for our life in what would be 10th, 12th, 14th and just hoping you don’t make a mistake and miss it by a few points and make it by a few point. This time of year there is nothing worse than being that position and knowing that everything you do matters. Whether it’s a parts failure or a mistake or whatever the case may be, it all matters right now.”
IS THIS YEAR SOMEONE CAN KNOCK JIMMIE JOHNSON OFF? “I hope so. I hope it’s our Budweiser team. I think right now it seems like there are a lot of people winning races and seems like you have to race a little bit different than you have in the past. It is just a matter of putting 10 weeks together. I think we are definitely capable of putting those 10 weeks together and doing what we have to do to win. So we just have to see what happens and keep our heads down and try to get a little better.”
PAUL MENARD, NO. 27 CERTAINTEED/MENARDS CHEVROLET, CURRENTLY SCORED 11TH: HOW ARE YOU FEELING ABOUT YOUR POSITION IN THE POINTS IF IT ENDS RIGHT NOW? “Slugger (Richard Labbe, crew chief) were up there crunching numbers. I think that moves us to the first wild card. If Joey (Logano) wins the race, he’s the second wild card. A lot can happen. If it goes back green, I think we can move back up there in the top-10. We are 11th right now. Who knows. The restarts here are crazy, especially with more rain coming, everybody is going to get pretty aggressive so we could get shuffled back as easily as we moved up so it is going to be wild. The car is good. It all depends on what lane you are in on the restart. You can gain five, you can lose five real easily. I’ve been better on the outside lane, if we go back, it will get all shuffled up with pit stops. I’ve been better on the outside, that way I can carry some momentum off turn one. Who knows.”
JEFF GORDON, NO. 24 DRIVE TO END HUNGER CHEVROLET, CURRENTLY SCORED 6TH: DID ALL THE HENDRICK CARS COME WITH THE SAME SETUPS? “I’m not really sure. I think they’re all fairly close. We were pretty good the last time we were here. I know that our setup is not that far off of where we were. Of course, it makes a big difference to start up front versus where we started today. When they dropped the green flag, we really struggled. So maybe some of it was the track conditions, they had just run that ARCA race and there was a little bit different rubber on it, but, just being back there in traffic with the Drive To End Hunger Chevrolet, I really struggled. I went backwards instead of forwards which I really thought we would come forward. I knew we had a good car and knew we needed to make maybe a few adjustments, but most importantly, just get that track position. My team has been just awesome, not just today, but lately. From the pit stops to the good calls and adjustments that Alan (Gustafson, crew chief) is making got us in the position to work our way up through there. That last restart went really well for us. I kind of hope we go back racing because I think we can get our car good enough to win.”
YOU WON THIS RACE HERE IN JUNE AND WITH ALL YOUR WINS HERE, HOW MUCH CONFIDENCE AND PATIENCE DOES THAT GIVE YOU? “You really make that decision on the spot. I’ll be honest with you, coming into this race, even though we qualified bad. Or I should say I hit the wall and made us qualify bad, I felt confident that when they dropped the green, we were going to drive by some cars and that was not the case. You just never know. At that time, I really wanted to make those moves because I thought the rain was coming in a hurry and get up there as fast as we could, but we just we didn’t have the car. We just weren’t in position. I couldn’t be aggressive. But as the race went on and the rubber started laying down, I felt our car getting better and we started gaining speed and we started making our way through the traffic. That is when I knew just be patient and we’ve got a car. Alan was asking me what kind of adjustments do we need to make? It finally got to the point of you know, I don’t think we need to make any adjustments, we just need to get track position and then slowly but surely it started coming.”
DALE EARNHARDT, JR., NO. 88 AMP ENERGY/NATIONAL GUARD CHEVROLET, CURRENTLY SCORED 5TH: GOOD DAY SO FAR, HOW DOES IT FEEL TO HAVE A CAR THIS GOOD? “We’d like to be better. We’ve been working on it and kind of have been chasing the track. The track has changed a lot all day long and we’ve been just trying to work on figuring out and trying to make a real good guess on what which direction the track is going to keep going.”
DO YOU WANT TO GO BACK TO RACING? “It’s going to do what it’s going to do. We’ll head home if we have to head home. I think we have a pretty small window. There is a bigger cell than what just came through here about 40 miles out going about 30 miles an hour so it is going to be kind of tight.”
DO YOU FEEL LIKE YOU HAVE SOMETHING FOR THE LEADERS? “We go down the straightaways really good. They get through the corners pretty good. I really haven’t had the opportunity to get up there and get a good look at them much. The Gibbs boys have always run pretty good here and looks like Denny (Hamlin) is starting to share a little bit of his magic with them other two. They are going to be tough.”
TALK ABOUT WORKING WITH STEVE LETARTE: “I get along great with him. I enjoy working with him. I enjoy him being my crew chief. We’ve got a great crew. We have a lot of great guys at the shop putting awesome race cars together. Everybody has a great attitude. It has been a real pleasure this year. We’ve got good engines. The race cars that they are sending down the road to these places are fun to practice and fun to work. Hopefully we can just get a little bit better. We’ve been improving all year long a little bit at a time. We had a little bit of a slump here. We need to put that behind us and hopefully can cap it off with a good finish today and look forward to the rest of the season.”
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